Immature Parents: Role Reversal

Many of today's teens are forced to act like adults—because their parents won't.

Mama Drama In December 2009 a California superior court awarded custody of then-seventeen-year-old Frances Bean Cobain (left) to her paternal grandmother and aunt and issued a restraining order against Frances's mother, Courtney Love (right).Photo: Adam Nemser/photolink.net/Newscom

After a tough first year at an Ivy League university, 20-year-old Sarah was
looking forward to relaxing over the summer. Unfortunately, her parents
made that impossible.

"My dad's an alcoholic, and my mom's addicted to dating alcoholics," the Stanford, California, native says. "They're divorced, and my dad is broke, so I had to help him get government assistance. Meanwhile, I needed to
deal with my mom's drama about the terrible guys she chooses." Between running her mom's dating life and managing her dad's finances, Sarah was exhausted by
summer's end—and relieved to return to college thousands of miles away. "I can't do much from here, so I can't feel guilty," she says.

These days countless teens like Sarah, who are coping with irresponsible parents, are forced to step in as the mature party. "When parents refuse to act like adults, it creates a power vacuum. Someone has to fill that space, and most often it's the teen son or daughter," explains Karol Ward, a licensed psychotherapist and author of Worried Sick (Berkley).

While Sarah had to take care of her mom and dad, nineteen-year-old Nicole,* in Buffalo, found herself playing guardian to her younger sister when their mother was MIA. "When I was sixteen, my fourteen-year-old sister Jen* and I wouldn't see my mom for three or four days at a time," she says. "I had to drive Jen to school and feed her because Mom wasn't around." The stress of the situation led to heated arguments that eventually destroyed Nicole's relationship with her mother: Now they are completely cut off from each other. "I'd complain about taking care of my sister, and my mom would say it was my responsibility because she was gone all the time working," Nicole says. "But her business wasn't open all hours of the night—she was with her boyfriend!"

Some of today's adults want to be young and free more than they want to be parents, explains Susan Shapiro Barash, author of You're Grounded Forever
. . . But First Let's Go Shopping (St. Martin's Press). "It's like this group enters a second adolescence, and their kids have to hang on for the ride," she says. The cultural shift is clearly evidenced in current popular media. While many TV series once portrayed mostly rock-solid mothers and fathers, today's shows—like Gossip Girl, The Real Housewives franchises, and Desperate Housewives—are more likely to reflect immature parents.

The loss of a parental authority figure robs teens of the lightness of adolescence. Vanessa, 20, of Spokane, says that her dad—who has been
divorced from her mom since Vanessa was in elementary school—was comfortable being her buddy but couldn't be depended on when the chips were down. "Three years ago I was in the hospital having a tumor removed," the
Washington native says. "It was expensive, and when we asked my dad for financial support, he told my mom he was done with me."

Teens like Vanessa are compelled to give up the traditional luxury of dependency on their parents and may need to grow up fast emotionally, says Nina Brown, Ed.D., author of Children of the Self-Absorbed (New Harbinger). However, "to a certain extent, teens cannot be fully independent," she says. And because limiting parental contact is not feasible, children of self-centered parents often try to take responsibility for their parents' problems and feelings. But teens have to recognize that they're not to blame for the actions of their guardian, Brown adds. Though Vanessa's dad has refused to have any contact with her for more than two years now, she's learned not to take his behavior personally. "Compared with what he dealt with, growing up in an abusive home, I guess he's father of the year," she says.